Carta a The Economist

Publiquem avui, atès el seu extraordinari valor argumentatiu, la carta que el Dr. Manel Camps, de la universitat de Santa Cruz, als EUA, va enviar a The Economist, com a resposta a les greus acusacions que aquest setmanari havia fet contra Catalunya, motivades segurament pel fet que els seus corresponsals estan a Madrid i només reben informació proespanyola.

No Coffee, Thank You

This first section of the article entitled “How much is enough?” presents a fairly accurate overview of the policies of “descentralización” (i.e. devolution of power to local entities) that happened with the advent of Democracy in Spain and of its practical outcomes. It accurately describes the three so-called “nacionalidades históricas” or areas of special historical significance as still a problem. The article elaborates on this conflict of interest in the two last sections entitled “Coffee just for us” and “The power of language”. Having grown up in Catalonia, I have to say that I find the last two sections completely biased in favor of Spanish nationalism and in some cases factually incorrect.


The bias can be seen in details such as referring to Basque and Catalan national movement as “nationalists” (with inverted commas) or deriding the grass-roots political movement of Esquerra Republicana as “localist”. I found the latter particularly offensive. Esquerra Republicana was the dominant political force in Catalonia until the Spanish Civil War. I wonder what makes it local. It represents a culture spread throughout a territory that has 12 million inhabitants and that produces 1/3 of the Spanish GNP. This territory is larger than many European nations. Would you call an Irish, a Hungarian or a Danish political movement localist? It sounds like any movement that doesn’t accept integration into Spain is considered localist by these standards. In another sign of egregious bias, Languedoc and Brittany are presented as examples of success, of content integration into France. In my view this “content integration” amounts to nothing less than cultural genocide. Cultural minorities in France have until very recently been denied even the most elementary support (instruction, media, etc..) and have essentially died out as a consequence. Provencal, a language with an illustrious history had 22 million speakers at the turn of the XX century, now it counts only about 2 million, most of them old. Breton had 1 million speakers in 1900, now it numbers about 200,000 again with very young speakers. We don’t want to follow their example. We kept our identity throughout the darkest periods of our history, surrendering it would be like losing our very essence.

Our national aspirations are presented as “a late XIX century invention” and our focus on the preservation of our language as an effort to cover up for our lack of national legitimacy. It is hard to argue our national movement was a recent invention when we fought two bloody wars to reassert our home rule against Madrid (1640-59 and 1700-1716). What the author probably means is that our modern nationalist movement originated around the end of the XIX century, precipitated by the calamitous defeat of Spain during the Spanish-American civil war. This movement wouldn’t have caught on without a base, our own law and language for example, which goes back to the self-government we enjoyed in the old Crown of Aragon. And this modern nationalist movement wasn’t something peculiar to Spain as the article suggests by linking it to the rapid industrial growth taking place at the time. Similar movements were taking place throughout Europe as the definition of nation shifted from being based on allegiance to a ruler to being based on a common culture and history. This new national conscience led to the reunification of Germany and Italy and to the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, of Yugoslavia 1991-1994, and of the Soviet Union in 1991. Our national movement is part of this wider historical trend. The fact it has only been partially successful doesn’t make it less legitimate.

The population of Euskadi and Catalonia is being presented as hostage to the extreme linguistic policies of a few nationalists. I’d like to point out that we are a democracy and that these policies have been implemented with the approval of the vast majority of the autonomous government. Note that, in spite of the fact that 75% of Basques and 50% of Catalans use Spanish as their first language, the “manifesto” to demand an increased presence of Spanish in schools originated in Madrid instead of Euskadi or Catalonia. The fact is that Spanish was a foreign language in Euskadi and Catalonia until modern times. In Catalonia, Catalan remained the native language of the vast majority of the population right up to the Spanish civil war in spite of strenuous efforts by the Spanish government to suppress it. The Franco regime (1939-1975) did enormous damage to our culture: 300,000 Catalonians went into exile, the cream of the crop of Catalan intelligentsia: teachers, writers, actors, artists. Countless others were killed. During the rapid economic growth of the 50s and 60s about two million people from Spanish-speaking areas of Spain moved into Catalonia at a time when Catalan was not allowed in School or in the media. Most Catalans, including Spanish speaking-ones, acknowledge the historical injustice done to Catalan and that it needs all the support it can get to hold its own against the more powerful Spanish. On the other hand Spanish is an official language in Catalonia. At the University Professors have the right granted by the Spanish Constitution to teach in Spanish. Professors are asked to understand Catalan, the same as members of any other public profession, and that is not much to ask given that as the article points out “Catalan and Spanish are more or less mutually intelligible”.
I believe the partisan tone of the article and its lack of historical depth do not measure up to the high standards of the Economist. Piecemeal quotations by Catalan and Basque politicians cited mostly without context do not suffice to give an accurate picture of our view on this matter, as I tried to explain. I believe that this opinion article should be followed up by another one presenting our side of this story.

Sincerely,


Manel Camps

 Santa Cruz, CA November 12, 2008